If you’re developing web apps for Windows Phone 7.5, you can now download the Metro style theme for JQuery Mobile.

Metro is, of course the interface style used by both Windows 8 RT and by Windows Phone 7. Being able to have HTML pages look like native applications is a big plus point for integration. Used in conjunction with Apache Cordova (aka PhoneGap) it can be used to create web apps that look and work like native apps.

The theme means HTML5 pages are adapted automatically to the Metro design style when rendered on Windows Phone 7.5.

The way the theme works is that the CSS and Javascript theme adapts to the current theme used in Windows Phone and applies the right styling to the jQuery Mobile controls. There’s a demo of the theme so that you can see what it looks like.

It is another "first product" of the new Microsoft Open Tech subsidiary recently established to further Microsoft's stake in open source projects.

In a blog post about the new theme Abu Obeida Bakhach from the Microsoft Open Tech subsidiary says:

“We believe it is important for developers to have choices when targeting Windows Phone, and we also want them to be able to deliver a good experience to the users of their applications, especially when making the choice of using Web standards (HTML5, CSS and JavaScript) to target multiple mobile platforms by picking solutions such as Apache Cordova.”

The new theme is open source, available for download on GitHub and can be used as a NuGet package in Visual Studio.

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